


I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

by Sigridhr



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst?, F/F, darcy has a stalkery crush, lemon rebellion, purpley prose, shoehorned-in citrus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 14:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8059393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigridhr/pseuds/Sigridhr
Summary: Darcy can't stop watching Sif and cataloguing: hundreds and hundreds of data points which bleed together but never quite make a full picture, at least, until Sif's hand reaches out and touches Darcy back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song" 
> 
> For the Lemon Rebellion.

Darcy has been watching Sif for 32 days, 9 hours and 34 minutes (approximately). 

These are the things she has learnt: Sif eats with her hands, slowly and measured, making the bizarre act of cutlery-less dinner seem elegant; she wears dresses (this was, at first, unexpected), takes care to braid her hair and is surprisingly fussy about it, and, Darcy thinks, might be amenable to nail polish if she sells it right; Sif is the best of the Asgardians with the internet, she picks things up more quickly and quietly than the others (except perhaps Hogun, but he shows less interest), and Sif likes to _learn_. And, finally, Sif stands always slightly outside: always the Warriors Three _and_ Sif, always a friend but always an other.

Darcy gets that. 

The thing is, Sif fits in. Sif gets along with everyone, moving through the world with an assurance and self-confidence seemingly inherent to the Asgardians and one that Darcy envies. But she can’t quite shake the feeling that Sif is still outside it all: and it’s Sif’s circle she wants in to.

So, she watches Sif. And she catalogues - at first unconsciously, and then slowly, building up in a silent talley in her mind until she has a list of a thousand little touches and moments that make up _Sif_ in her mind. Sif is always curious, but asks fewer questions than Thor (always two steps behind, even though she stands alone and apart, her decisions and her will her own, always parallel but never passing Thor’s light). Darcy wonders whether it is friendship or duty that holds her always close, but never touching, the light. 

So, Darcy drops hints like breadcrumbs, (easy enough for her to do, she does it anyway), sentences full of pop culture references and jokes that she knows she’ll have to explain to Sif. And, dutifully, she leans over Sif’s shoulder, just close enough to touch, while she googles it for her. 

“Cat videos,” Darcy says, seriously, cradling a still-warm cup of coffee in her hands, “are the best thing for a rainy Sunday afternoon.” 

“Why not simply possess a cat?” Sif asks, though she scrunches her nose as if she’s uncertain of the appeal either way. 

“Not a cat lover?” Darcy asks. 

“I used to hunt with dogs,” Sif replies with a shrug. “I fail to see the purpose of a cat.” 

“Pest control,” says Darcy. “Cats domesticated themselves to feed on the rats which lived in grain stores - we get to eat, they get to eat: everybody wins. Of course the modern purpose is really internet fame. And cuddles.” 

“I have no grain to protect,” says Sif. 

Darcy shrugs. “Story of my life, dude.” 

Sif stares at her, the corner of her mouth turned up in amusement - but stuck there, as if she’s not certain that she should be amused. “You wish for grain?”

Darcy waves her hand dismissively. “I dunno, I guess - well, money doesn’t buy you happiness and all that - but it does buy you security. I just want enough to stay afloat, you know?” 

Sif makes a noncommittal sound.

“What about you?” Darcy asks. “What do you want?” 

Sif looks down at Darcy’s coffee, and Darcy’s slender fingers still wrapped around the outside of the mug. 

“Glory,” says Sif. “Renown. And, ultimately, joy.” 

“But you’re like part of the Asgard elite death squad doing Mission Impossible shit all the time, aren’t you?” Darcy asks.

Sif smiles. “We have had many adventures, yes,” she says. “Although I would not consider them ‘impossible missions’. But true glory? I have not yet found my victory.” 

Darcy is quiet for a moment, thinking of all the things Sif must have done in her life and wondering what true ‘glory’ could possibly look like. “And joy?”

Sif looks away. “No,” she says. “Not joy.” 

…

The Asgardians begin to slip into the routine of daily life around day 60, and it takes about this long for Darcy to stop seeing them as sticking out like sore thumbs. But always, in the corner of her eye, is the reminder that they are something more than human. She sees it in Sif’s gait, the way she seems to glide rather than walk, almost operating under her own gravitational constants, above the base laws of the universe that seem to tie Darcy down to Earth more than ever. 

Sif’s laugh is louder, her voice brighter and when she sings – late at night when the alcohol is flowing (all the time, when Thor has his way), she sings, and Darcy wraps herself in her sweater shaking with the sound of a language that has been dead for lifetimes on her world re-awakened, rising like some ancient beast, and she feels as if the world around her might come alive in a way that might transcend the metal and plastic world she was raised in.

It never does, but secretly Darcy feels ancient and runs the earth through her fingers just to feel grounded again. 

They sit around a bonfire of Thor’s making, Jane tucked at his side, while the Warrior’s Three are engaged in some kind of drinking competition. Sif, like Darcy, stands somewhat apart, her face pointed upwards towards the stars – towards home, Darcy thinks – singing low in her throat. 

Darcy feels her voice in her bones, and it’s lonely and deep and _old_.

Sif’s eyes meet her over the flickering flames, and they burn into her with surprising intensity. Darcy feels very small and very young all at once. Sif smiles slowly as if, somehow, she’s caught the train of Darcy’s thought, and turns back up to the stars.

...

She has counted 105 touches. 105 points of contact which still vibrate on her skin as she recalls each of them in turn, creating a map of secret points which align with Sif like constellations. 

At first, it was Darcy. Darcy who leant just a little too close, brushing her shoulder as she reached for something. Darcy whose fingers touched Sif’s as she passed a mug of tea. Darcy whose skin crawled, almost of its own accord, ever towards her. 

But gradually, Darcy’s noticed, the balance has tipped. Sif stands always that little bit too close, as she does now. Darcy is cleaning up all of Jane’s data, turning the output into a clean .csv file which Jane can run tests on, and Sif is _there_ , just over her shoulder, watching her work.

“Your fingers move quickly,” Sif says, approvingly. But Darcy can feel Sif’s hair on her shoulder, Sif’s breath on her cheek, and can say nothing at all. 

“An odd skill, but a useful one, it would seem.” 

“Hmnn,” Darcy manages, mistyping a line of code. 

Sif chuckles, and Darcy shuts her eyes. 

“You must teach me,” she says. 

“Sure,” says Darcy, when she remembers to breathe. 

...

Sif has a room to herself, and it is sparse - but Darcy finds it warm. Sif prefers candlelight still to electric, and the yellow glow always seems to pull Sif farther in Darcy’s mind from earth. In here, she can see Sif as a goddess, remote and ethereal.

But, strangely, in here she also her most mortal. It has a bad and a desk, and the few clothes Sif keeps are folded neatly in drawers. It’s so _ordinary_. Darcy wonders how someone as strange and wonderful as Sif makes it all fit in the small box of a room she’s been given.

Darcy loves it in here. 

Jane makes an odd comment to her one morning that Darcy’s the only one Sif’s let in there - and Darcy can’t quite place why that fills her with warmth, but it does. 

“I have a favour to ask,” says Sif, as they sit side by side on Sif’s bed, Darcy’s laptop open as the credits scroll for an episode of Orphan Black (at Darcy’s insistence and with Sif’s goodnatured approval). 

“Of course,” Darcy says. “Anything.” She’s stopped being surprised at how much she means it. 

“Mabon approaches,” says Sif, as if this makes any sense at all. The look on Darcy’s face must have been clear enough because she proceeded to explain. “It is a time to make bread to feast before winter. I,” and Sif pauses, and Darcy senses something fragile and weighty in the air between them, “I usually participate in the feast, but here there is nothing. I don’t wish to make it alone - will you join me?” 

“Yeah,” Darcy says, her throat suddenly dry (it’s _bread_ for god’s sake, just making goddamn _bread_ , and yet her heart is in her mouth and she feels giddy all over). “Sure.” 

Then, feeling like she should probably say more than ‘yeah, sure’, she adds, “I’d be honoured.” 

“As would I,” says Sif. “It’s a time I prefer to spend with friends.” 

Darcy reaches out and grabs Sif’s arm at that, linking their elbows and leaning against her side. “Hey,” she says, as the warmth from Sif’s skin spreads tingling from where their arms meet, “what are friends for?” 

…

She spends all night panic-googling bread baking and sending a series of emails to her mother demanding family recipes.

Her mother emails back with her grandmother’s recipe for lemon loaf and a lot of questions about her wellbeing. 

…

“Is lemon loaf bread?” Darcy asks Jane. 

“Have you seen the plots I made of the readings we took last week?” Jane replies, shifting through a mound of paper nearly as tall as she is. “I know I left it here somewhere.” 

Darcy roots around and pulls out the graphs, handing them to Jane. “Seriously, though,” she says, after Jane’s distracted ‘thanks’, “is lemon loaf bread?”

Jane makes a face at her. “I don’t know, why do you care?”

“Like, I know it’s pretty cake-y, but would it count as a bread? I’d count it as a bread. Like banana bread.”

“Pretty sure it’s a cake,” mumbles Jane. “Why, do we have some?” 

“Fuck, it’s all I’ve got.” Darcy says. “I don’t know how to bake.”

Jane looks up from her work, staring at Darcy with a scrutinising eye. “Are you OK?” she asks. “Has something happened?”

“Nope,” Darcy says. “Just, you know, baking. Things.” 

Jane stares at her for another long moment. “I guess it’s like a sweet bread?” she says, sounding unconvinced.

“Sweet bread,” says Darcy. “Yeah. _Sweet_.” 

Jane sighs. “I can never tell when you’re being weird weird or normal weird anymore.” 

Darcy laughs, beginning to sort through the pile of paper. “It’s always weird weird - and you wouldn’t have me any other way!”

Jane makes a noise somewhere between exasperation and affection. 

…

Sif is in the kitchen, looking uncharacteristically out of sorts. She has flour up to her elbows and she’s wearing a basic shift dress. She looks smaller, somehow, without her usual outfit. It’s odd to see Sif in such a domestic space, and Darcy wonders if, like Sif’s room, this is a side of her rarely seen by others.

“So,” says Darcy. “I’ve got an old family recipe. It’s a sweet bread. Is that OK?”

Sif smiles. “I look forward to it.” 

“Cool,” says Darcy, “because I wasn’t sure if it was OK because it’s kinda cakey, like not normal _bread_ bread, you know? And I just don’t really know what the rules are to all this and… I’ll shut up.”

Sif is laughing her head thrown back and stray flour caught in her dark hair, glinting like snowflakes in the fading New Mexico sun. Her laughter is loud and bold and and bright, so _bright_ , Darcy wants to bask in it. 

Sif gives her a gentle look overflowing with affection and takes Darcy’s hand in her own. “As with most things, it is the spirit in which the act is done that matters, not the precise execution of the act itself.”

“Not so much with knife throwing,” Darcy says, and immediately feels stupid.

Sif’s fingers tighten briefly around her own before letting go. “No,” she agrees. 

Sif’s hands turn to kneading dough, and Darcy watches, almost transfixed. Sif catches her eye, and looks knowing – too knowing – and Darcy can’t help but blush. She busies herself making the loaf, sifting the flour and adding sugar and eggs. 

She’s zesting the lemon when she realises Sif is watching her. 

“Is this OK?” Darcy asks.

Sif shrugs. “As I have said, it is the intent of the offering, not the offering itself which matters.”

“You know, historically, people were pretty picky about offerings.” 

Sif laughs. “And to whom were those offerings left? It was _people_ not we who were ‘picky’.” 

It’s odd to think of Sif as more than _Sif_ , who is standing in her kitchen, barefoot with braided hair half-covered in flour. Sif who has marathoned Orphan Black with her all week, and who she’s seen drunk. She knows Sif isn’t human, but there is a step between being something more and a _god_. 

Sif smiles at Darcy. “I would welcome anything from you which you are willing to give.” 

The sharp and sweet smell of lemon hangs in the air between them and Darcy feels so far out of her depth, so lost in the vastness of the edge she’s standing on, that for a moment she’s paralysed. But only for a moment: she has been watching for 73 days, 6 hours and 5 minutes, she has catalogued more than a hundred touches, and she _leaps_.

Her lips touch Sif’s, gently at first, and then Sif’s hands tangle in Darcy’s hair. They’re sticky from the dough but neither of them can bring themselves to care. Sif tastes sweet, like mead, and Darcy pulls her as close as she can, touching as much of her skin as she can reach. 

It’s Sif who breaks the kiss, but she does not let go of Darcy. Gently, Sif presses kisses to her eyelids, her forehead, her cheeks. 

“How long have you known?” Darcy asks.

“Since the beginning,” Sif replies, smiling. “You have watched me without cessation since I arrived.” 

Darcy blushes at that. “Yeah, sorry,” she says. “Couldn’t help it.” 

Sif laughs again, and presses a kiss to Darcy’s brow. “I have never understood Thor’s fascination with Midgard,” she says, turning Darcy’s fingers over in her own hand and examining them. “Your kind live such brief lives, and understand so little.”

Darcy nearly jerks her hand back at that. 

“I meant no offence,” says Sif, mildly. “Your species has grown considerably. But you once looked upon us as gods, I have always had trouble seeing you as equals.” 

“And now?” Darcy asks, almost dreading the answer.

“You hold a great deal of fascination,” says Sif quietly. “This is perilous, what we have begun.” 

Darcy isn’t sure she understands, still giddy and heady and _brave_ , the taste of Sif still on her tongue and the air heavy with possibility. 

“Yet I cannot stop,” says Sif. 

It has been 73 days, 6 hours and 13 minutes, and Darcy has counted two kisses.


End file.
